I recently worked with a UW team (including my friend Tiffany Youngquist) to create a small fun game which uses EMG facial input to control a cute little ball shaped unicorn (hence unicORB) as it captures rainbows from clouds to prevent the impending darkness. It was part of a competition called Tech Sandbox, which focuses on finding control and interface solutions that could be used by people with disabilities or unique challenges to standard computer inputs and interfaces. This is a bit different than the projects I was originally envisioning, but is very much in line with the core principles behind Sparklight Studios for creating projects that are socially beneficial.

I worked with Tiffany on the game design and concept, and then fully developed the game itself. The rest of the team handled the EMG interface and connecting that with the game inputs, as well as collaborating on the best facial gestures to use.

So some things happened which have greatly lengthened the process for starting up my projects. First, I decided, based on the advice of several indie developer friends, that I should not work on my ambitious project as my first go at it. Second, I spent a very long time iterating on other designs trying to get to something I felt was simple but at least basically accomplished my goals and was interesting. Third, I realized that my timeline was not going to achieve financial sustainability (surprise 😉 ). And Fifth, I found a very awesome project in the Seattle area with an Art Director opening that was very enticing… and got the job.

So for the foreseeable future, I am the Art Director at Goblinworks (goblinworks.com), and working on a very exciting sandbox MMO called Pathfinder Online, based on the very successful pen and paper game Pathfinder. It’s a great team and a great project. I am continuing to work on my own projects on my own time, and have the added benefit of being able to potentially pay programmers and/or animators to help me complete the aspects of my projects I am less adept at implementing.

It will be a much longer time period, but I have returned to my initial project design because it is what I’m most excited about and passionate about. One of the great things I’ve been exposed to at Goblinworks is the practice of releasing EVERYTHING about the game. We are super transparent. I think I’m going to start the same process with my own project. I would love to get feedback an hone the design and ideas, and would love to share what I’m doing.

Hopefully this new e-mail to blog thing works… it will make it much easier and much more likely for me to post! I’m dubious of images being supported, but will try that in an upcoming post. Until then!

Things are just getting started, but I already have one small game well under way and another more ambitious title lined up with designs and concepts. I am still deciding how much information to publish during development, but I am leaning toward disclosing a lot of it early on to get feedback. Check back often!